Sashenka (27 page)

“You didn’t invite me,” said the man, “but I came anyway. I’ve heard about your parties.

Everyone comes. Or almost everyone.”

“You mean I’ve always forgotten to invite you.”

“Precisely, but then I’m very hard to get.”

“You don’t seem too shy to me. Or too hard to get.” She was glad she had worn the Coty perfume. “Then why did you come?”

“I’ll give you three guesses who I am.”

“You’re a mining engineer from Yuzovka?”

“No.”

“You’re a heropilot, one of Stalin’s Eagles?”

“No. Last chance.”

“You’re an important apparatchik from Tomsk?”

“You’re tormenting me,” he whispered.

“All right then,” Sashenka said. “You’re Benya Golden, writer. My naughty uncle Gideon said he’d asked you. And I love your Spanish stories.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said in English with an American accent. “I’ve always really wanted to write for
Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping
. It’s one of my life’s ambitions.”

“Now you’re mocking me.” She sighed, aware of how much she was enjoying talking to this strange man. “But we do need a piece for the autumn on ‘How to prepare Happy Childhood chocolate cakes and Soviet Union candies—tasty and nutritious food for the Soviet family.’ Or if that doesn’t take your fancy, how about a thousand words on the new Red Square perfume produced by Comrade Polina Molotov’s Cosmetics Trust? Don’t laugh—I’m being serious.”

“I wouldn’t dare. No one laughs these days without thinking first, especially not at Comrade Polina’s perfume, which, as every Soviet woman knows, is a revolution in the struggle of perfumery.”

“But you usually handle wars,” Sashenka pointed out. “Do you think Benya Golden could handle a
really
serious subject for a change?”

“Yours are truly challenging subjects, Comrade Editor,” replied Benya Golden, “and I know you wouldn’t tease a poor scribbler.”

“Poor scribbler indeed. Your stories sell really well.”

There was a silence.

“Must I stand here in holy audience,” Benya asked, changing the subject, “or may I sit beside you?”

“Of course.” She made space in the hammock. Benya was wearing a white suit with very wide sailor trousers and was looking at her intensely from beneath eyebrows set low over blue eyes with yellow speckles. His fair hair was balding. In the dimming pink light, she could see he had long eyelashes like a girl. She knew he was originally a Jew from Habsburg Galicia, and she remembered her mother saying that Galitzianers were jackanapes and rogues, worse than Litvaks—and Ariadna had probably had personal experience of both. I’m not sure I like him, she decided suddenly; there is something brash about him.

She found herself aware of her movements as she rearranged herself in the hammock, and felt irritated by the way he had crept up on her. He was invading her privacy, and his proximity made her feel shivery inside.

“I have an idea for our article,” said Benya. “What about ‘The disturbing effect of Red Square ladies’ perfume and Moscow Tailoring Factory stockings on those promiscuous shock workers and Stakhanovites in the Magnitogorsk steelworks’? That will really get their furnaces stoked.”

He started to laugh and Sashenka thought he must be drunk to say something so clumsy and dangerous.

“I don’t much like that idea,” she said soberly. She stood up, sending the hammock rocking.

“Now you’re behaving like a solemn Bolshevik matron.” He lit a cigarette.

“I’ll be who I like in my own house. That was an unSoviet philistine joke. I think you should leave.”

She stormed toward the dacha, so furious that she was shaking. She had relaxed for a moment, her head turned by his fame, his presence in her house, but her Partymindedness now righted her tipsy mind. Was this sneering vulgarian here by coincidence or had he been sent to provoke her into a philistine joke that could ruin her and her family? Why was she so infuriated by his boozy arrogance and pushy flirtatiousness? Wasn’t he wary of her husband’s position? Her anxiety about her fragile happiness made it all the more unsettling.

Then, stepping from the fuzzy darkness into the light of the house, she saw Carlo asleep in the big chair by the piano. He looked adorable, his upturned nose and closed eyes so innocent. Snowy was sitting on Uncle Gideon’s knee, trying to poke the corners of her pink cushion into his mouth while he talked to Utesov about Eisenstein’s new movie,
Alexander
Nevsky
. Gideon’s actress girlfriend, almost a child herself, sat next to them on the sofa, wideeyed as she listened to Gideon’s loud reflections on famous writers, beautiful women and faraway cities.

“Uncle Gideon?” said Sashenka.

“Am I in trouble?” he replied with mock fear.

“I don’t much like your friend Golden. I want him to leave.” Sashenka scooped up Carlo, kissing him, careful not to wake him.

“Come on, Snowy. Bedtime.” Carolina appeared magically at the door and was beckoning to her.

“I don’t want to go to bed! I won’t go to bed,” shouted Snowy. “I’m playing with Uncle Gideon.”

Gideon slapped his thigh. “Even I had to go to bed when I was little!”

Sashenka felt suddenly weary of her party and her guests.

“Don’t act spoiled, Snowy,” she said. “You’ve had a lovely present today. We’ve let you stay up and now you’re tired.”

“I’m NOT tired, you silly—and I want a cuddle with Uncle Hercules!” Snowy stamped her foot and pretended to be very angry indeed—which made Sashenka want to laugh.

The sitting room was at right angles to Vanya’s study. As she headed toward the door, Sashenka could make out her husband’s curly greying head and barrel chest. He was still in his blue trousers although now sporting his favorite embroidered shirt.

Vanya sat at a desk on which were placed three Bakelite phones, one of them his new orange
vertushka
, the hotline to the Kremlin. He was arguing with Uncle Mendel, one of the few Old Bolsheviks elected to the Central Committee at the 1934 Congress of Victors and reelected at the Eighteenth Congress. The others had overwhelmingly vanished into the meat grinder and Sashenka knew that most of them had been shot. But Mendel had survived. They were discussing jazz: Soviet versus American. Mendel liked Utesov and Tseferman’s Soviet version while Vanya preferred Glenn Miller.

“Vanya,” boomed Mendel’s trumpet of a voice out of his tiny twisted body, “Soviet jazz reflects the struggle of the Russian worker.”

“And American jazz,” replied Vanya, “is the music of the Negro struggle against the white capitalists of—”

“I
won’t
go to bed,” cried Snowy, throwing herself onto the ground.

Vanya leaped up, effortlessly gathered Snowy into his arms and kissed her. “
Bed
before I box your ears!” Vanya put Snowy down and gave her a little push.
“Now!”

“Yes, Comrade Papa,” said Snowy, chastened. “Night, Papochka, night, Uncle Mendel.”

She skipped out.

“Thank you, Vanya,” said Sashenka as she followed with Carlo in her arms.

A car door slammed outside, a light step sounded on the veranda, and the family favorite, Hercules Satinov, smart in a white summer Stalinka tunic, soft cream boots and a white peaked cap, peeped round the corner.

“Where’s my Snowy?” he called. “Don’t tell Cushion I’m here!”

“Uncle Hercules!” cried Snowy, scampering back into the room, opening her arms to him and kissing him.

Sashenka kissed their friend thrice, bumping into her daughter in the process. “Hercules, welcome. Snowy was longing to see you! But now you’ve seen him, Snowy, you’re going to bed! Say good night to Comrade Satinov!”

“But Mama, Cushion and I want to play with Hercules,” Snowy wailed.

“Bed! Now!”
Vanya shouted and Snowy darted back down the corridor toward her room.

If anything, Sashenka reflected, Hercules Satinov had become better looking with time.

His black hair still gleamed with barely a strand of grey. She remembered how he and Vanya had come to collect her when her mother died, how kind they’d been to her. Now she watched as Satinov embraced his best friend, before noticing Mendel and shaking his hand formally.

“Happy May Day, comrades!” he said in his strong Georgian accent. “Sorry I’m late, I had papers to get through at Old Square.” Satinov, who had helped run the Caucasus, now worked in the Party Secretariat at the grey granite headquarters on Old Square, up the hill from the Kremlin.

“What a party, Sashenka! The jazz men singing together? Even at receptions for the leaders in St. George’s Hall, I’ve never seen that before. I hope you don’t mind, Vanya, some Georgian friends have invited themselves, and they’ll be here shortly.”

4

“Aren’t you leaving?” Uncle Gideon loomed up over Benya Golden, smoking a cigarette on the veranda. “You ideeeot!”

“Gideon, shush. Did you hear what Satinov said? Some Georgians are coming! Which ones? Someone big?” Benya whispered.

“How would I know, you
schmendrik
! They’re probably some Georgian singers or cooks or dancers!”

Gideon gripped Benya’s hand and pulled him outside into the dark orchard. Benya peered around nervously.

“No one can hear us here,” said Gideon, checking that Razum and the drivers were still singing dirty songs at the gates.

“If they’re just cooks or singers, why have you dragged me down here and why are you speaking, Gideon, in that bellow of a whisper?”

The sky glowed rosily and warmly, an owl hooted, and the sweet scent of flowers seeped out of the orchard. Gideon liked Benya Golden enormously and admired him as a writer.

They both loved women, though as Gideon liked to put it, “I’m an animal while Benya’s a romantic.” He put his arm around his friend.

“If these Georgians are big bosses,” he said, “the less people like
them
know about people like
us
, the better.” He remembered his brother Samuil, Sashenka’s father, who he assumed was long dead now, and suddenly his chest hurt and he wanted to cry. “Ugh, time to go! Cure your curiosity, Benya! But I’m whispering, you big
schmendrik,
because you’ve offended my niece. Well?”

“I put my foot in it with the comrade editor. She’s no Dushenka,” Benya said, “no featherbrain. I had no idea she was so extraordinary. Is she happily married?”

“You ideeeot! Firstly she’s Vanya Palitsyn’s wife, my dear Benya, and secondly she’s never even looked at another man! First love and they’ve been together ever since. What did you do, pinch her ass, or suggest that Marshal Voroshilov is a blockhead?”

Benya was silent for a minute. “Both,” he admitted.

“You Galitzianer
schlemiel
, you tinker!”

“Gideon, what’s the difference between a
schlemiel
and a
schlimazel
?”

“The
schlemiel
always spills his drink onto the
schlimazel
.”

“So which am I?”

“Both!” Gideon told him and they roared with laughter.

“But the trouble is—I’m short of work,” Benya said. “I haven’t written for ages. They’ve noticed of course. I really do need a commission from her magazine.”

“What? About how to organize a masked jazz ball for workers celebrating production targets? Have you no shame?” asked Gideon.

“Why did I tease her?” groaned Golden. “Why can I never resist saying things? Now you’ve got me worried, Gideon. She won’t denounce me, will she?”

“I have no idea, Benya. The Organs and the Party are all around us here. You have to behave differently in such houses. Here the softness is only skindeep.”

“That’s why I had to come. I want to understand what makes them tick—the men of power and violence. And that Venus with her mysterious, scornful grey eyes is at the center of everything.”

“Ahhh, I see. You want to understand the essence of our times and write a
Comédie Humaine
or a
War and Peace
on our Revolution, starring our princess Sashenka from the mansion on Greater Maritime Street? We writers are all the same. My niece’s life’s a spectator sport, eh?”

“Well, it’s quite a story, you must admit. I’ve met them all—marshals, Politburo members, secret policemen. Some of the killers were as delicate as mimosa; some of those who were crushed by them were as coarse as tar. At Gorky’s house, I met the sinister Yagoda, you know, and I once played the guitar with that insane killer Yezhov, at the seaside.” Benya was no longer smiling. He looked anxiously at Gideon. “But the meat grinder is over, isn’t it?”

“Comrade Stalin says the Terror’s over and who am I to disbelieve him?” answered Gideon, who really was whispering now. “Do you think I’ve survived this long by asking stupid questions?
Me?
Of all people? With
my
family background? I do what I have to—

I’m the licensed maverick—and I console myself in holy communion with drink and flesh.

I’ve spent the last three years waiting for the knock on the door—but so far they’ve let me be.”

“
They?
Surely Comrade Stalin didn’t know what was happening, did he? Surely it was Yezhov and the Chekists out of control? Now Yezhov’s gone; that good fellow Beria has stopped the meat grinder; and, thank God, Comrade Stalin is back in control.”

Gideon felt a lurch of fear. Although he regarded himself as a mere journalist, he had, like all the famous writers—Benya himself, Sholokhov, Pasternak, Babel, even Mandelstam before he disappeared—praised Stalin and voted for the Highest Measure of Punishment for Enemies of the People. At meetings of the Writers’ Union, he’d raised his hand and voted for the death of Zinoviev, Bukharin, Marshal Tukhachevsky: “Shoot them like mad dogs!”

he had said, just like everyone else, just like Benya Golden. Even now he was aware of his rashness in discussing such sensitive questions with the overexcitable Benya. He pulled Benya close, so close his beard tickled his ear.

“It was never only Yezhov!” he murmured. “The orders came from
higher
…”

“Higher? What are you saying…?”

“Don’t write that book on the Organs and don’t tease my niece about Komsomol cakes and the ‘furnaces’ of female steelworkers! And Benya, you need to write something, something that pleases. We’re off to Peredelkino—Fadeyev’s having a party and he hands out the writing jobs so you’d better be polite to him this time, and don’t hang around here anymore if you ever want to work again!”